Professors and friends said White was an outstanding teacher who genuinely cared about his students and about the world at large, which he worked tirelessly to improve.

White died April 11 at his San Antonio home at 85.

“If there was a march in San Antonio, he was right there,” said longtime friend Father Bill Davis Jr., now pastor of a Catholic parish in Laredo, who was involved with White in social justice campaigns while leading St. Mary's Catholic Church in San Antonio in the 1980s. “Certain guys like O Z are always looking for answers to problems.”

Michael Kearl, a Trinity sociology professor who knew White since the 1970s, said he was the professor that Trinity counted on “to rescue a student from jail and the first one to stand up for the disenfranchised and discriminated.”

“He was and is the faculty member returning alumni of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s invariably ask about,” Kearl said. “In many minds, he was Trinity.”

White was born in Danville, Va., and at 16, one longtime friend said, he joined the U.S. Merchant Marine and transported troops and supplies to Allied forces during World War II.

After the war, his obtained a Master's of Divinity degree from Erskine Theological Seminary in South Carolina and worked there as an assistant professor and chaplain before getting a doctorate from Emory University and coming to Trinity in 1964.

Doug Brackenridge, a professor emeritus in Trinity's religion department and close friend of White, will speak at a memorial service Wednesday.

White, an ordained Presbyterian minister, channeled his religious values as a sociology professor by pushing his students to get involved in helping others, Brackenridge said.

“He wanted to be a doer. He said you couldn't change things unless you change structures,” Brackenridge said.

White was an unpretentious man known simply as “O Z” who made friends everywhere, including those who worked at the physical plant at Trinity, whom he called “the real people on campus,” Brackenridge said.

During his 28 years at Trinity, White helped found the Chi Delta Tau fraternity, which emphasized social outreach, and provided volunteer assistance himself to the San Antonio Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse and other organizations.

White, who ran for the chairmanship of the Bexar County Democratic Party in 1988, retired from teaching in 1992 but provided consulting and volunteer services in San Antonio afterward.